Requiem for the American Dream Page #3

of the world. Far from it.

And, of course,

the capital is free to move.

Workers aren't free to move,

labor can't move, but capital can.

Well, again, going back

to the classics like Adam Smith,

as he pointed out,

free circulation of labor

is the foundation of

any free trade system,

but workers are pretty much stuck.

The wealthy and the privileged

are protected,

so you get obvious consequences.

And they're recognized

and, in fact, praised.

Policy is designed

to increase insecurity.

Alan Greenspan. When he testified to congress,

(Alan Greenspan Chairman of the Federal Reserve

from 1987 to 2006)

he explained his success

in running the economy

as based on what he called,

"greater worker insecurity."

A typical restraint on

compensation increases has been

evident for a few years now,

but as I outlined in some detail

in testimony last month,

I believe that job insecurity

has played the dominant role.

Keep workers insecure,

they're going to be under control.

They are not going to ask for,

say, decent wages...

Or decent working conditions...

Or the opportunity of free

association, meaning unionize.

Now, for the masters

of mankind, that's fine.

They make their profits.

But for the population,

it's devastating.

These two processes,

financialization and off-shoring

are part of what lead

to the vicious cycle

of concentration of wealth

and concentration of power.

I'm Noam Chomsky

and I'm on the faculty at MIT,

(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

and I've been getting more

and more heavily involved in

anti-war activities

for the last few years.

Noam Chomsky has made

two international reputations.

The widest is as one of the

national leaders of American

resistance to the Vietnam war.

The deepest is as a professor

of linguistics,

who, before he was 40 years old,

had transformed the nature

of his subject.

You are identified with the new left,

whatever that is.

You certainly have been an activist

as well as a writer.

Professor Noam Chomsky...

Is listed in anybody's catalog

as among the half-dozen top

heroes of the new left.

The standing he achieved

by adopting over the past

two or three years

a series of adamant positions

rejecting at least American

foreign policy, at most

America itself.

Actually this notion

anti-American is quite

an interesting one.

It's actually

a totalitarian notion.

It isn't used in free societies.

So, if someone in, say,

Italy is criticizing Berlusconi

or the corruption of the Italian state

and so on, they're not called anti-Italian.

In fact, if they were called anti-Italian,

people would collapse in laughter

in the streets of Rome or Milan.

In totalitarian states the notion's used,

so in the old Soviet union dissidents

were called anti-Soviet.

That was the worst condemnation.

In the Brazilian military

dictatorship, they were

called anti-Brazilian.

Now, it's true that in just

about every society,

the critics are maligned

or mistreated...

Different ways depending on

the nature of the society.

Like in the Soviet union,

say Vaclav Havel would be

imprisoned.

In a U.S. dependency like

El Salvador, at the same time,

his counterparts would have

their brains blown out by

U.S.-run state terrorist forces.

In other societies, they're just

condemned or vilified and so on.

In the United States, one of the terms of abuse

is "anti-American."

There's a couple of

others, like "Marxist."

There's an array

of terms of abuse.

But in the United States,

you have a very high degree

of freedom.

So, if you're vilified by some

commissars, then who cares?

You go on,

you do your work anyway.

These concepts only arise

in a culture where, if you

criticize

state power,

and by state, I mean...

More generally not just

government but state

corporate power,

if you criticize

concentrated power,

you're against the society,

that's quite striking that

it's used in the United States.

In fact, as far as I know,

it's the only Democratic society

where the concept

isn't just ridiculed.

It's a sign of elements

of the elite culture,

which are quite ugly.

The American dream, like many

ideals, was partly symbolic,

but partly real.

So in the 1950s and 60s,

say, there was the biggest

growth period

in American economic history.

The Golden Age.

(approximately from 1945 and lasted

until the early 1970s

It was pretty

egalitarian growth,

so the lowest fifth of the

population was improving about

as much as the upper fifth.

And there were some

welfare state measures,

which improved life

for much the population.

It was, for example,

possible for a black worker

to get a decent job

in an auto plant,

buy a home, get a car,

have his children go

to school and so on.

And the same across the board.

When the U.S. was primarily

a manufacturing center,

it had to be concerned

with its own consumers... here.

Famously, Henry Ford raised

the salary of his workers

so they'd be able to buy cars.

When you're moving into

an international "plutonomy,"

as the banks like to call it...

The small percentage

of the world's population that's

gathering increasing wealth...

What happens to American

consumers is much less

a concern,

because most of them aren't

going to be consuming your

products anyway,

at least not on a major basis.

Your goals are,

profit in the next quarter,

even if it's based on

financial manipulations...

High salary, high bonuses,

produce overseas if you have to,

and produce for the wealthy

classes here and their

counterparts abroad.

What about the rest?

Well, there's a term coming

into use for them, too.

They're called

the "precariat"...

Precarious proletariat...

The working people of the world who live

increasingly precarious lives.

And it's related to the attitude

toward the country altogether.

During the period of great

growth of the economy...

The '50s and the '60s,

but in fact, earlier...

Taxes on the wealthy

were far higher.

Corporate taxes

were much higher,

taxes on dividends

were much higher...

Simply taxes on wealth

were much higher.

The tax system has

been redesigned,

so that the taxes that are paid

by the very wealthy are reduced

and, correspondingly,

the tax burden on the rest of

the population's increased.

Now the shift is

towards trying to keep taxes

just on wages

and on consumption...

Which everyone has to do, not, say, on dividends,

which only go to the rich.

The numbers are pretty striking.

Now, there's a pretext...

Of course, there's always a pretext.

The pretext in this case is,

well, that increases investment

and increases jobs,

but there isn't

any evidence for that.

If you want to increase investment,

give money to the

poor and the working people.

They have to keep alive,

so they spend their incomes.

That stimulates productions,

stimulates investment, leads

to job growth and so on.

If you're an ideologist for the masters,

you have a different line.

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